Lurking in Waldman’s novel, as in many portraits of the dating scene (ahem, Lena Dunham, ahem), is a kind of moral traditionalism that dare not speak its name — or that can be spoken of only in half-jest, as when the novelist Benjamin Kunkel told Traister that the solution was “some sort of a sexual strike against just such men.”

Because Kunkel is right: One obvious solution to the Nathaniel P. problem is a romantic culture in which more is required of young men before the women in their lives will sleep with them.

To the extent that parents tend to see the next generation’s world through their children’s eyes, that’s an insight that’s more immediately available through daughters than through sons.

And no matter what the next study says about your likelihood of actually turning into a Republican, once you’ve flirted with that insight, you’ve tiptoed a little closer to something that might be described as social conservatism.

Even if you live in Brooklyn.

-Ross Douthat, The New York Times

Hello. I’m Ross Douthat. Is this thing on? [unintelligible mumbling] I thought there was a…a little secretary inside. With the magnets. Like a dictaphone. I just type in it, then? Okay. We can get rid of this part, though, right, before it goes to press? Great.

I’m here to talk to you about a problem that’s real bad, this problem: daughters: everybody’s got them. Or at least it seems that way. Nowadays you can’t turn around in a shipyard without spilling your flagon of home-brewed pineapple bread on a daughter. I don’t live in Brooklyn, but some people do, and a lot of them are or even have daughters. Daughters can turn you into Republicans, but they don’t always. You gotta build a castle to protect your daughters, from dragons that want to eat their hair, usually, but also from guys who want to have sex with them. The daughters, not the dragons. As far as I know nobody but dragons are having sex with dragons, but I’m a pretty broad-minded guy. If someone wants to have sex with the dragon and the dragon is willing and the field is big enough, I say follow your bliss.

What is a daughter, anyhow? Science defines them as mostly skin and eyes, but with also some liver and teeth and central nervous systems, and they live in your house and they like Honey Graham Os better than they like Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and they’re right here in the room with you and their name is Denise and they have soccer practice. I am not a Republican. I am a human man, and I am writing an essay on a tall desk made of quills and excellence. This will be published in The New York Times, which is not my daughter.

Full disclosure: The New York Times is my daughter. Hello, darling. Daddy loves you awfully much. He’ll never let those awful dragons have sex with your hair.

Before I had daughters, I was just Ross Douthat. Now that I’ve had daughters…I’m Ross Doutheart. Sometimes I worry that Lena Dunham is my daughter. Could I still have sex with her novel?

Sometimes I go to bed, and I can hear my daughters giggling in the walls. I read a book this week about a man named Nathaniel. Nathaniel Hawthorne was an important American short story writer and also novelist. He wrote a book about a house with seven gables, and it was about a friendly house I think. He had no daughters and was a Whig. I don’t think that’s what this book is about, though, because this Nathaniel’s last name is P. and also he lives in Brooklyn today instead of Boston 300 years ago. But hey, to each their own. :)

Next time you’re having sex, ask yourself: could she have a father? Doesn’t that sort of make you her father in a way? It doesn’t, doesn’t it? Daughters: a modern menace. Daughters: a real problem. Daughters: ponies are too expensive, darling, stop asking.

Men, we’re indecisive, it’s hard probably to make some decisions. Women want to be in love but we want sex well into our thirties. What are you gonna do?? Make daughters I guess. Whose eyes do you see the future through? I tried looking through my daughter’s eyes, but when I did I saw the most horrible strangled-looking black-eyed things hanging from every lamp and lighbulb in the house that I sat down hard on the floor and I cried and cried. And then I voted for Ted Cruz, just in case. Only Ted Cruz can save my daughters from the horrible strangled-looking black-eyed things hanging from every lamp and lightbulb in the house that won’t stop screaming. I’m Ross Douthat, and I don’t think you should sleep with your boyfriend until he likes you a whole lot, especially if you’re a daughter. Are you? Are you my daughter? Will you help keep me awake before the black-eyed things get me?

In conclusion, I am Ross Douthat. Please do not have sex with my daughters, celebrated dead novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne. You get back in your grave. You stay there. You belong in the past. My daughters can see the future, and it’s filled with horrible demons that already know our names.

ok this is great. The nyt comments on the ross douthat op-ed are KILLING me. an excerpt:

"If I had a dime for every liberal, promiscuous horn dog from his college years who later turned into a conservative upon getting married, settling down and actually having a daughter of his own – I would have enough money to buy Fox News, the bastion voice of these selfsame, now-converted hypocrites that I write about."

CordeliaFitz

Oh, good grief. That article.

Dads!

We'll be O.K. You can stop worrying about us. Please stop voting for Ted Cruz.

"young men are taught that women are their property, and so they can treat them however they like, and OBVIOUSLY the solution to this is to dig a deep underground pit and put my daughters in it and make any young man who wants to see them complete a series of trials"

"Young men are taught that women are their property. But my young women are my property, and I'm going to lock them away like the valuable objects they are."

tragicallyludicrous

Can't we just cloister the young men away? And then young ladies can go visit to pick one out to try. You can return the young man within 14 days if he is not suitable.

MilesofMountain

As long as it's a no-questions-asked return policy. They look so much smaller in the cages, then you get them home and they're way bigger than you thought and they take up so much room at the end of the bed and keep knocking stuff off the tables.

Give Douthat credit then: he was blaming a woman ("Chunky Reese Witherspoon") for all the ills of society Back in the Day as well.

icebergmama

what even what.

Mary

Ross Douthat will not be spared.

queenofbithynia

I am confused as Ross Douthat is primarily famous (to me) for his very creepiest essay in which he described a nubile Reese-Witherspoon-esque blonde crudely trying to seduce him with her repellently bountiful breasts, a circumstance he was half-heartedly going along with until she mentioned her birth control prescription, and then his gorge rose, his manhood revolted and his erection withered. (I paraphrase but I do not exaggerate and I know this is online somewhere if you don't believe me.

So if Ross Douthat is representative of wild, ungoverned, predatory manhood, as he surely is, the way to protect our daughters from him and his sort is to teach them all the basic social liberal values of sexual aggression and contraception usage, and they do not have to be blonde and pointy-chinned but that probably helps a lot.

Best Answer! He is Ross Doubt Hat at our house.
He's afraid of women, I think. Uncontrolled women. What will they get into? Trouble, that's what.

YLemonnier

I look at him and think "Don't Douthat," amirite

mollyculetheory

Doutfedora.

morose_delectation

I always think of him as "Doubt That."

elldubs

I can never figure out if Ross Douthat thinks less of women or men. Women are weak, simple children who need to be married to men for whatever reason but have nothing to offer men but sex and babies. Men, however, are roving scoundrels who care only about getting their rocks off and will cruelly use and discard women on a whim. This is all biological fact. Also, gay people do not exist. Ross Douthat's world is a sad, sad place.

the_wooorst

He's basically like "now some liberals might think that my conservatism stems from a patriarchal desire to control my daughter's sexuality but actually I read literary novels and know who Lena Dunham is and yes, my conservatism stems from a patriarchal desire to control my daughter's sexuality."

Someone please pitch a story that starts with the sentence, "My daughters can see the future, and it’s filled with horrible demons that already know our names."

BellaG

It's not that daughters can see things that are invisible to the eyes of men. It's that daughters are calling those creatures, summoning them from the vasty deeps and the crevices of other dimensions. They're here for the misogynists; they feed on the souls of soured men, and once sated, they'll return to where they came from.

See what you've brought us to, misogynists? We tried to talk with you, we tried to reason with you. But you wouldn't listen. You left us no choice. Time to start praying, misogynists, for the Dark Ones are gathering…

I have a dragon who likes to eat my hair– it's called a cat, and there is no way to protect against it.

tragicallyludicrous

My dumb cat will eat my hair that's on the floor after I comb it out.

BourneApprox

There's nothing like sitting at my home desk, and suddenly hearing that "om nom nom" sound behind me. Also, I haven't shaved my legs in a few weeks, and after I shower I'll sometimes find my cat trying to groom me.

What were we talking about? Oh yeah, Ross Douthat is a patriarchal patriarch and/or asshole.

J.L.

My favorite comment EVER.

karl

Neither Douthat's editorial nor your reply explains why women refuse to have sex with me. I had thought that the internet is the place where our questions are answered. Very disappointing.

Sugar&Snails

I cringe a little bit to even respond to this man with a semblance of seriousness, but… I know many men who became substantially more liberal once they had daughters, because it finally sank in that women's rights matter. And I know this isn't the argument, but I know lots of people who became more liberal once they had kids of any sort, because suddenly they were saying to themselves, "What if MY child turns out to be gay/goes to public school/can't look forward to having social security ever?" It doesn't work for everyone, of course, but there are people in the world who grow in empathy after having daughters/children, rather than transforming in caricatures of shotgun-wielding dads.

mollpants

I always feel like I've met Ross Douthat at some college party, and he was wearing a shirt buttoned all the way up when everyone else was in jeans and he had cheese crumbs at the corner of his mouth and was talking incessantly about the misuse of Ayn Rand in closing arguments by his fellow mock trial club members and, like, actually got mildly drunk off the beer in the keg but kept insisting he wasn't.

…which is my way of saying that I don't think he's inventive enough to think of dragons. Oh well. This is still perfect.

inapartydress

So, question: did anyone here read this book? I thought Nate was just about my worst nightmare. Like every guy I previously dated secretly had Nate's inner, detestable monologue (except my current guy, obviously; THIS ONE'S different, probably). But seriously. Sensitive Literary Men of Coastal (and/or College Town) America: Terrible or The Worst?

MilesofMountain

I have not read it because every time I read a description of the protagonist, I think that I have spent enough of my time on this planet on men like that. All of my current guy's books are about various sports personalities or elves and dragons, and I like it that way.

Amy

I did think he was a nightmare, but I loved the book. It made me laugh so much! It makes me sad that her perfectly innocent book has been dragged into Ross Douhat's cluttered-spare-room of a column.

BourneApprox

Making sweeping social statements based on a new fiction book and a single sociology study using 20 year old data? Must be a Douthat or David Brooks op-ed!

Yes, good point– Douthat and Brooks seem to fill a similar Cantankerous Clickbait role. Why are there two of them? Is there is a grant or an endowment or something for Illogical Syllogisms Defending Conservatism? Is–wait–is BROOKS Douthat's daughter?

BourneApprox

I'm not sure if Brooks is Douthat's daughter, if the NYT is their daughter together, or if something even stranger is going on. Quickly, to the Fanfictionmobile!

Arin Arcady

I cannot figure out why the Times continues to pay them. There's got to be someone who can do a better job, even if just faking believing these things!

Ross Douthat knows how his bread is buttered when the misandrist revolution goes down.

Amy

1) Really this one paragraph says it all: Before I had daughters, I was just Ross Douthat. Now that I’ve had daughters…I’m Ross Doutheart. Sometimes I worry that Lena Dunham is my daughter. Could I still have sex with her novel?
2) Like I said in my reply above, I thought "Nathaniel P" was a good book, and I think it's too bad old Douchehat decided to misuse it to make his "argument."

Arkadin

"As far as I know nobody but dragons are having sex with dragons, but I’m a pretty broad-minded guy."